Adorno and Benjamin independently converged on the same cultural-critique objects from opposite directions

Evidence

In 1936, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung published ‘On Jazz’, an essay written by Adorno under the pseudonym Hektor Rottweiler. Situating this text within the ongoing debate initiated by ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, Adorno describes it in a letter to Benjamin as extremely closely related to the latter’s own article, even going so far as ‘to insist that the entire conception of my essay … goes back to a time before I became acquainted with your work’. Benjamin in turn attributes their independently originating engagements with a similar topic to ‘a profound and spontaneous inner communication between our thoughts’ causing their respective investigations to be ‘like two different headlamps trained upon the same object from opposite directions’. Yet to use Benjamin’s metaphor, Adorno’s contribution appears to cast a decidedly brighter light on the object in question. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 348

Categorization

• XREF: The headlamps metaphor and pseudonymous publication underpin standard Frankfurt School historiography; connects to the Benjamin-Adorno exchange over technique and cultural reproduction. — connects to: Adorno’s aphorisms were a form of intellectual collaboration under forced separation; Benjamin valued distraction and habit in perception where Adorno required concentration. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 632; Adorno saw mass art as reconciling audiences to the status quo, unlike Benjamin. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 630 (+6 more)